Crush Liberalism

Andrea Yates: Not guilty by reason of insanity

Van Helsing at Moonbattery has a great post on the Yates acquittal. For those of you who don’t recall, Andrea Yates drowned her five kids in a bathtub, and was convicted of her crime. Her conviction was overturned, she was retried, and she was found to be “not guilty by reason of insanity.” I left a comment at Moonbattery, but I will copy-and-paste it here.

Please allow me to submit that Yates was not insane, but psychotic. You see, “insane” is not a clinical term…it is a legal term. One can be psychotic, yet legally sane. See Ted Bundy, Jeff Dahmer, etc.

The legal definition of “insane” basically means the following:

* the accused must lack the ability to understand his/her actions;

* the accused must lack the ability to appreciate the wrongfulness, or illegality, of his/her actions.

* some locales require that the accused must not have remorse for their actions, because remorse indicates an ability to appreciate the wrongfulness of the actions.

If ANY of those conditions are not met, then the insanity test fails. For example, Bundy and Dahmer were both psychotic, and no one disputes that. However, because they actively hid the evidence of their crimes by various means (lying, hiding bodies, ingesting them, etc.), those acts show that they clearly understood that their acts were wrong (morally, legally, etc.).

Scenario #1: A cop goes into a house and sees a man killing a woman. The cop tells the man to stop and drop the weapon, and the man says “Why? I’m killing Satan!” If clinical tests show that the killer genuinely believed he was killing Satan and thus benefitting mankind, chances are that the killer would be found “Not guilty by reason of insanity.” Why? Because he would not have been able to appreciate the reality of his crime, nor would he have determined that his crime was actually a crime.

Scenario #2: A woman waits for her husband to go to work, and then proceeds to drown her five kids in a bathtub, one by one. She then calls 911 to admit what she’s done. That very phone call, plus the initial waiting of the hubby to leave, illustrated that she knew her actions were wrong, thus obliterating her insanity defense.

The jury got it wrong, pure and simple. Yates is psychotic, NOT insane!

July 27, 2006 Posted by crushliberalism | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

Dean: Stalin comparison not "divisive"

Stones and glass houses and whatnot. From the gift that keeps on giving, Howard “The Scream” Dean (h/t NewsMax):

Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean told a group of Florida business leaders that Republican policies of deceit and finger-pointing are tearing American apart.

Dean called President Bush “the most divisive president probably in our history.”

“He’s always talking about those people. It’s always somebody else’s fault. It’s the gays’ fault. It’s the immigrants’ fault. It’s the liberals’ fault. It’s the Democrats’ fault. It’s Hollywood people,” Dean said. “Americans are sick of that. (Really? That’s not what elections indicate! Then again, Democrats know as much about winning elections as I do about quantum physics. – Ed.) Even if you win elections doing that, you drag down our country.”

Yeah…”divisive“:

Democrat leader Howard Dean called the Iraqi prime minister an “anti-Semite” during an address before party loyalists on Wednesday, drawing a swift rebuke from Republicans. The Democratic National Committee chairman also called Republican Senate candidate Katherine Harris a “crook” and compared her to Stalin.

There’s just not much else that I can add to illustrate ol’ Howie’s idiocy, is there?

July 27, 2006 Posted by crushliberalism | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

Kofi’s reflexive anti-Semitic accusations betrayed by facts

Oh, those pesky facts! They’ll get in the way of a good leftist anti-Semitic accusation every time, won’t they?

Kofi accused Israel of intentionally targeting U.N. “peacekeepers” in a recent attack against Hezbollah terrorists. Oops:

An apparent discrepancy in the portrayal of events surrounding the deaths of four unarmed U.N. observers in Lebanon threatens to unravel Secretary-General Annan’s initial accusation that Israel “deliberately” targeted the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon.

A Canadian U.N. observer, one of four killed at a UNIFIL position near the southern Lebanese town of Khiyam on Tuesday, sent an e-mail to his former commander, a Canadian retired major-general, Lewis MacKenzie, in which he wrote that Hezbollah fighters were “all over” the U.N. position, Mr. MacKenzie said. Hezbollah troops, not the United Nations, were Israel’s target, the deceased observer wrote.

“The deceased observer wrote”? I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that the observer wrote the e-mail before being “deceased”, but if the e-mail was verified by Mary Mapes, then that assumption may be incorrect. But I digress.

According to Little Green Footballs…:

Retired Canadian Major General Lewis Mackenzie was interviewed on CBC radio, and had some very interesting news about the UN observer post hit by Israeli shells; the Canadian peacekeeper killed there had previously emailed Mackenzie telling him that Hizballah was using their post as cover. (Hat tip: Isadore.)

We received emails from him a few days ago, and he was describing the fact that he was taking fire within, in one case, three meters of his position for tactical necessity, not being targeted. Now that’s veiled speech in the military. What he was telling us was Hezbollah soldiers were all over his position and the IDF were targeting them. And that’s a favorite trick by people who don’t have representation in the UN. They use the UN as shields knowing that they can’t be punished for it.

As Opinion Journal notes:

The U.N.’s years-long record on the Israel-Lebanon border makes mockery of the term “peacekeeping.” On page 155 of my book, “Inside the Asylum,” is a picture of a U.N. outpost on that border. The U.N. flag and the Hezbollah flag fly side by side. Observers told me the U.N. and Hezbollah personnel share water and telephones, and that the U.N. presence serves as a shield against Israeli strikes against the terrorists.

Useful idiots? You decide.

July 27, 2006 Posted by crushliberalism | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment